The 10 Best Booths at Frieze New York 2025

The mood in the art market might be a touch cloudy at the moment, but there were no gray skies to be seen as Frieze New York 2025 opened the doors to its VIP preview on Wednesday, May 7th, at The Shed in Hudson Yards.

The bout of much-needed sunshine added a rosy tint to what has otherwise been a nervy period in the industry. Indeed, the political and economic climate was undoubtedly on the minds of those in the art world during the run-up to this year’s fair. Frieze arrives as the U.S. economy posted its first quarterly GDP contraction since the start of 2022, and the country’s Consumer Sentiment Index—a key measure of how consumers feel about the economy—plummeted to 32%, its lowest level since the 1990s, while stock market jitters and tariff anxieties linger.

The question of how these factors would shape the most significant week for arguably the most important city in the international art market remained a stubborn talking point ahead of proceedings. And as more than half a dozen other art fairs open in time with Frieze, including NADA, Independent, and TEFAF—plus a stuffed slate of gallery activity and the spring auctions coming next week—the stakes feel especially high.

Opening on the same day the papal conclave gets underway, Frieze New York 2025 is also embarking on a new chapter of its own. Last week, it was announced that an Ari Emmanuel–led venture is to purchase the company, which includes fairs in London, Los Angeles, and Seoul, The Armory Show in New York, EXPO Chicago, and Frieze magazine. The acquisition values Frieze at $200 million and gives the company some much-needed solidity since it was first put up for sale last year.

While the deal isn’t set to formally close until the third quarter of 2025, murmurs abounded among VIPs as to what the acquisition might mean for the future of the brand’s New York fair. With some 67 galleries taking part this year (one fewer than in 2024), Frieze New York isn’t just the company’s most diminutive edition, it’s also among the smaller fairs taking place this week.

But what it lacks in booths, Frieze New York more than makes up for in firepower, representing a broad range of major artists and exhibitors from across blue-chip and emerging segments of the market. Galleries from some 25 countries are present, including heavyweight names such as Hauser & Wirth, Pace, Gagosian, and David Zwirner. Major New York galleries such as Karma and Tina Kim are also in attendance, while the Focus section, dedicated to young galleries presenting solo projects, features seven newcomers.

As the fair’s VIP day unfolded at 11 a.m., concerns about a lack of enthusiasm were quickly allayed by strong attendance and a spirited atmosphere. The fair’s main floor—home to the bulk of blue-chip exhibitors—was practically unmaneuverable during the fair’s first hours, with steady crowds continuing to spill into The Shed throughout the day.

How this liveliness converts to concrete dealmaking will be a topic of much attention and speculation as the fair continues into the weekend, with early signs suggesting a degree of cautiousness among collectors.

“The pace is notably different to usual when it comes to sales; people are taking their time and being really considered,” noted dealer Thaddaeus Ropac. His tone, however, was one of confidence: “This slower pace gives collectors space to make their decisions,” he added. “We’re cautiously optimistic that the results will be the same in terms of how much sells by the end of the fair.”

Leading the sales on opening day was one of Gagosian’s three Jeff Koons sculptures. While the gallery did not officially comment on the sale, sources told Artsy that the work was priced for upwards of $3 million. Read our digest of sales from the VIP day here and stay tuned for our full sales report on Monday.

Here, we share the 10 best booths from Frieze New York 2025.

Booth B5

With works by Jeff Koons

Often controversial but seldom ignored, Jeff Koons was the talk of The Shed at the fair’s VIP day. This solo booth with Gagosian marks a reunion between the artist and mega-gallery (which he left in 2021), but it also encapsulates what has made Koons such a unique force since his emergence in the 1990s—namely, the brash, bold maximalism that few artists can produce with such original consistency. It is, in other words, Koons at his Koonsiest, and you’re going to have an opinion on these works whether you want to or not.

Set against a vinyl, comic-book graphic booth backdrop adapted from the artist’s painting Triple Hulk Elvis III (2007), the presentation houses a trio of “Hulk Elvis” sculptures, first started in 2004. The figures of the iconic Marvel superhero appear like inflatables at first glance, but are in fact constructed in bronze and other materials. One Hulk is wielding an organ, another a tuba (both instruments are fully functional), and the third is wrapped in two inflatable swim floats. All three are from Koons’s personal collection, and glare menacingly out at passersby, redolent of the rage that was shared by more than a few VIPs towards the sculptures at the fair’s preview. “‘Hulk Elvis’ represents for me both Western and Eastern cultures, a sense of a guardian, a protector, that at the same time is capable of bringing the house down,” Koons has said.

As the VIP day progressed, it was clear that the buzz caused by the works was translating into commercial interest. “The fair is off to a great start, and the response to our booth has been phenomenal,” said Gagosian senior director Millicent Werner, who confirmed that the gallery had sold Hulk (Tubas) (2004–18) in the opening hours of the fair, and that there was “strong interest” in the other two works.

—Arun Kakar

Booth B7

With works by Sonia Gomes, Eunnam Hong, Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato, Paulo Nimer Pjota, Antonia Obá, Kishio Suga

Eight bisected granite boulders form the center of Mendes Wood DM’s expansive booth, in which Kishio Suga’s Sliced Stones (2018) anchors a transnational dialogue between 1960s Japanese minimalism and Brazilian modernism. Associated with the Japanese and Korean Mono-ha (School of Things) movement that emerged in the 1960s, Suga incorporates industrial materials, such as stones or metals, to create his conceptual sculptures. The rocks in the installation were sourced from Brazil and are connected by a horizontal incision across each of the surfaces. The artist, who sliced the stones himself at the gallery, had his first show with Mendes Wood DM in May 2024.

“What’s interesting about Kishio and why we decided to bring them into the program in the first place was how much it resonated with Brazil’s rich history, with minimalism and Neo-Concretism,” said Martin Aguilera, a partner at the gallery. “So, there’s a very direct line that you can see from this period of Japanese art with artists that we’re very familiar with, like Lygia Clark and Lygia Pape.” The work was acquired by an unnamed institution on VIP day for an undisclosed price.

Sliced Stones anchors a standout booth that contains works by a selection of artists from the gallery’s roster. These include a contorted textile wall work by Sonia Gomes and a pastoral figurative painting, Uma alegoria / morte-vida: coragem [An Allegory/ Life-Death: Courage] (2024) by Antonio Obá. The eye is also drawn to the booth’s back wall, which features a series of four paintings by the late Brazilian modernist Amadeo Luciano Lorenzato. These intimately scaled colloquial paintings depict serene natural landscapes absent of humans. The longest of these paintings, Untitled | Sem título (1981), features a red sun descending on a hazy green horizon.

—Maxwell Rabb

Booth F11

With works by Yehwan Song

At Seoul’s G Gallery booth, Korean artist Yehwan Song offers an inventive view on our experience of digital systems and the algorithms that govern them. The artist’s installation Internet Barnacles (2025) is both monumental in scale and minuscule in its detailing.

Intricately constructed cardboard slats are used to create a modular structure that replicates clusters of barnacles at the bottom of the ocean. Small panels act as a screen upon which varying fragments of digital imagery are projected. The internet represented here is embodied through themes of homogeneity and alienation.

“I was fascinated by how when we talk about the internet, we always use water as a metaphor, like web surfing or streaming service,” the artist told Artsy. “For this specific piece, I redefined the user from a web surfer to an internet vertical. Verticals are not actively surfing the internet but more passively receiving the wave.”

Indeed, the installation produces an almost hypnotic experience for the viewer, diverting one’s attention from different screens to panels, in which imagery is scattered and refracted, forgotten and half remembered—an experience reminiscent of an algorithmically charged doomscroll. This is a bleak internet, a far cry from the techno-optimism of old: “How we use the internet these days, it’s just very much trapped social media and pre-made platforms,” Song said. The installation, which is priced in the range of $22,000 to $30,000, is an edition of three. One edition had sold in the early hours of the fair.

—A.K.

Booth D9

With works by Cristina Camacho, Carolina Caycedo, Mazenett Quiroga, Santiago Reyes Villaveces, Gloria Sebastián Fierro, Aurora Pellizzi, Aycoobo (Wilson Rodríguez), Nohemí Pérez, Pia Camil, Otto Berchem, Ana Roldán, Nancy Friedemann-Sanchez, Tania Candiani

At the heart of Instituto de Visíon’s booth is Nancy Friedemann-Sanchez’s Biombo 1 (2021), a five-panel wooden screen painted with a giant bouquet littered with helicopters and army men. Friedemann-Sanchez draws from the ancient Colombian technique of mopa mopa, which, in the 1500s, was co-opted by Spanish settlers to mimic and sell fake Chinese lacquer works. Using this technique, the Colombian American artist critiques imperial histories and ongoing violence, particularly the violence within the Andean community due to the conflicts spawned by the regional coca trade. The piece is priced at $52,000.

The Botoa and New York gallery’s group presentation features a large cross-section of works from its roster. “It was a challenge to put all these pieces together and make them work together, but they are all of such a good quality, and they are all talking about the relation between the body, identity, and the relationship with nature, which started working very well,” director Beatriz Lopez told Artsy.

Another standout is Aycoobo (Wilson Rodríguez)’s Calendario (2025), an acrylic painting featuring the Earth among the cosmos. The planet is meticulously divided into plants and fauna in a sort of visual taxonomic hierarchy. Rodríguez draws from the knowledge and aesthetics of his father, the late Colombian painter Abel Rodríguez, who was known for his documentation of wildlife across the Amazon rainforest. This work instills his father’s work with contemporary urgency.

These works are surrounded by a selection of paintings from Cristina Camacho’s “Quickenings” series, which features geometrically carved and folded canvases. Elsewhere, the gallery is presenting six of Pia Camil’s erotic pastel paintings. Works in the booth range in price from $5,000 to $50,000.

—M.R.

Booth D14

With works by Sunil Gupta, Chitra Ganesh, Anthony Cudahy, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Andrea Geyer, Hew Locke, Kay WalkingStick, Jordan Ann Craig, and Tessa Boffin

Themes of queerness, ancestry, and cultural rootedness are among the narrative strands to pull from at the booth of London and New York gallery Hales, which is making its Frieze New York debut. The gallery’s smartly curated program, stitching together emerging and established names, is on full view here.

New works by fast-rising painter (and Artsy Vanguard alum) Anthony Cudahy, for instance, highlight the artist’s gift for imbuing ordinary scenes with intimacy and nuance. That talent is shared by the Indian photographer Sunil Gupta, whose works hang nearby. A series of photographs from the artist’s seminal 1987 “Exiles” series captures the experiences of gay men in his hometown of Delhi. “At the time, they seemed particularly vulnerable as a group and didn’t have a recognizable place in society,” Gupta once said of the series, which was recently exhibited at MoMA and the Barbican in London. “As a gay man, I felt I couldn’t live in such a repressive atmosphere.”

Other highlights are works from Hew Locke’s “Souvenir” series. Featured in a recent show at the British Museum, the works transform 19th-century Parian ware busts of figures from the British royal family into a sharp commentary on imperial power.

“Our presentation spans the 1970s to present day, including trailblazing painters and photographers of the 20th century alongside younger figures who are continuing the conversation,” said the gallery’s managing director, Stuart Morrison. “The dialogue between generations is important to our vision as a gallery, as with artists Sunil Gupta and Anthony Cudahy, considering as a culture where we’ve come from and where we’re going.”

—A.K.

Booth B11

With works by Hannah Levy

New York–based artist Hannah Levy’s sculptural works at Casey Kaplan bend glass and steel into uncanny, bodily forms. The centerpiece, Untitled (2025), features five spidery steel arms that cradle a warped basin of slumped orange glass—part bassinet, part spindly ghost. The piece, alongside four additional new works by the artist, tests how these industrial materials stretch, bulge, or yield under pressure, resulting in otherworldly designs.

Levy’s work draws from and rearticulates the history of design. The freestanding sculptures reference the clean lines of Charlotte Perriand and Eileen Gray but replace utility with fragility and discomfort. Levy’s use of slumped glass subverts modernism’s emphasis on functionality, instead opting for gestures of excess and collapse. The pieces appear as if they could be usable but may buckle under gravity, creating objects that appear to barely balance on their legs. “She’s thinking about how not just two materials conflate—steel and glass—but also how art movements and design movements can sort of coalesce,” said Veronica Levitt, director at Casey Kaplan.

The wall-mounted works channel Art Nouveau’s organic forms but add a touch of menace to their elegance. Clawed steel arms reach out, gripping ripe orbs of blown glass as if they are being squeezed. Their symmetry and polish heighten the sense of danger, representing an anxious sort of beauty. Another Untitled (2025) work appears to depict two strong arms clasping an amber glass globe with vicious strength. The five works range from $45,000 to $80,000.

—M.R.

Booth B6

With works by Moon Kyungwon

Those looking to retreat from the clammy heat of The Shed on the fair’s VIP day could find some cool in Gallery Hyundai’s solo presentation of snow-dappled paintings by Moon Kyungwon.

Kyungwoon—who represented South Korea at the 2015 Venice Biennale with regular collaborator Jeon Joonho—hones her focus here on the sociopolitical aspects of landscape paintings. “[The paintings] are primarily based on a location called Freedom Village, which is in between the Demilitarized Zone [of North and South Korea], a rare civilian area where people actually live, but no one from the outside world can enter,” explained gallery director Yunu Lee.

This series of nine works aims to capture the essence of what lies beyond the veil of landscapes in what the artist describes as a “mechanism for making visible what cannot be seen.” The result is works that are layered both literally and metaphorically, with the artist weaving different brushstrokes and textural flourishes to craft delicate, and often eerie, scenes.

These works move beyond traditional landscape paintings, evoking erasure and temporality through fading hues and blurred reflections. “What might have existed beyond the landscape? And when? Is it something of the present?” the artist said in a statement. “My landscape is a curtain—a veil through which all questions begin to unfold.” Works are priced between $40,000 and $200,000.

—A.K.

Booth B3

With works by Claire Tabouret

When Claire Tabouret was tapped to design the new stained-glass windows for Notre Dame, the rising French-born artist was placed in the middle of heated controversy. Protestors in France have tried to block the replacement of the windows created by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc in the 19th century. The artist will be propelled further into the spotlight this year, as she prepares for a major exhibition at the Grand Palais this December.

Perhaps the buzz—good and bad—surrounding the Los Angeles–based artist is why Perrotin decided to present a rare solo presentation for Frieze New York. Here, Tabouret is presenting seven luminous portraits.

“[Tabouret] created this really amazing group of intimate portraits which explore sleep and memory,” said Peggy Leboeuf, senior director of Perrotin New York. “I was in awe when we opened the crates to see the strong touches of purple, white, and red, the vivacity of gesture, and at the same time, a delicate color palette and the tenderness of her characters.”

Five of the seven portraits feature sleeping figures. Rendered in bold brushstrokes, Self-Portrait Under the Moon-light (all works 2025), for instance, features a sleeping figure spread out on a blue-toned couch in the night. A similar figure appears again in Broken Images of the Night’Treasure; however, this time, the figure is being watched over by a crowd of angel-like figures in green robes. These works investigate our most private moments, during which we forfeit our guard and dispositions. In many ways, Tabouret appears to find and communicate a sense of comfort in these moments of vulnerability.

The seven paintings, priced between $65,000 and $200,000, sold out early on the fair’s VIP day.

—M.R.

Booth D10

With works by Dora Longo Bahia, Edgard de Souza, Iván Argote, Rosângela Rennó, and Ximena Garrido-Lecca

Since it was founded in 2002, São Paulo’s Galería Vermelho has carved out a niche for championing Latin American artists across generations, particularly those who work across various mediums and methods.

In this booth, that philosophy is on view with a wide range of works. A particular highlight is Brazilian artist Rosângela Rennó’s Farewell Ceremony (1997–2005), a series of photographs originally produced for the 1997 Havana Biennial. Taken from a set of wedding negatives given to the artist by a local Cuban photographer, these works depict newlyweds inside a car after their ceremony, a tradition shared by Brazilians and Cubans. The pieces have changed color over time, mutating into blues and browns, lending haunted quality to the works. This is further undergirded by the lost identities of the subjects in the photographs and the frozenness of their emotional moments.

Experiments in materiality are evident in new sculptural works from Peruvian artist Ximena Garrido-Lecca, who examines her country’s copper industry through traditional Andean weaving techniques; and in silk embroideries by Edgard de Souza, one of Brazil’s foremost artists of the 1980s, which appear as gestural, almost abstracted clouds.

“We wanted to show this Latin American identity that we have, and we want to highlight some artists on their own paths,” said gallery staffer Maya Beiguelman of the selection. Prices for works at the booth range from $18,000 to $45,000.

—A.K.

Booth F6

With works by Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley

London’s Public Gallery stages a fiercely personal and politically charged presentation by British artist Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley which confronts Black trans erasure and discrimination through digital resistance.

At the booth, a glowing control box with five numbered red buttons sits in front of a giant digital screen. Fairgoers during VIP day were beckoned to sit in the red-trimmed gaming chair and play the artist’s video game NO SPACE FOR REDEMPTION (2024), an immersive experience offered in an edition of three, priced at £18,000 ($23,900) apiece.

The gallery will also present different video games by the artist throughout the fair. On Thursday, the gallery will present WE ARE HERE BECAUSE OF THOSE THAT ARE NOT / BLACKTRANSARCHIVE.COM (2024), a work not for sale. Friday will feature PIRATING BLACKNESS / BLACKTRANSSEA.COM (2021), also available in an edition of three for £18,000 ($23,900) each.